News Summary The services delivery arm for NSW Health, HealthShare NSW, has selected Oracle systems to deploy a new technology platform to assist with the organization's strategic growth program. Oracle Engineered Systems, including Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, were chosen as the hardware infrastructure due to high performance and the ability to process payroll data in around a quarter of the time presently possible with legacy hardware. The decision to deploy Oracle Engineered Systems follows HealthShare NSW's rollout of Oracle E-Business Suite, running on Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, to support the payroll and HR requirements of NSW Health's 140,000 staff.

Key criteria for the new infrastructure included increased performance and scalability, standardization and the ability to provision for future growth. HealthShare NSW identified a direct connection between the ability to reduce data processing times and increased efficiency of service center operations and associated costs; faster processing drives costs down.

Oracle Engineered Systems were chosen for their demonstrated ability to deliver a 6-8 times performance improvement over the current platform. During a Proof of Concept (POC), HealthShare NSW found that Oracle Exadata was able to perform a given process twice as fast as its nearest competitor.

HealthShare NSW's decision to put in place an optimized technology platform was driven not only by a natural hardware refresh cycle, but also by system consolidation requirements and data centre reform initiatives to save IT costs and improve service levels.

HealthShare NSW also intends to improve agility, cut costs, and improve service levels by utilizing the Oracle Exadata platform as the foundation for an Oracle Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) solution. The solution provides a consolidated, consistent database thus reducing HealthShare NSW's dependence on the need for specialized database administration skills.

The platform refresh follows the rollout of a Corporate IT program by HealthShare NSW to consolidate its ERP requirements to support HR and payroll services, as well as financial and procurement functions. HealthShare has rolled out Oracle E-Business Suite, incorporating Oracle Human Capital Management, to more than 129,000 NSW Health staff, with another 11,000 staff to be incorporated as part of the final phase.

The Corporate IT Program requirements also called for a new state-wide identity management system. HealthShare NSW selected Oracle Identity Management to enable single sign-on for all NSW Health staff.

In addition, elements of Oracle's middleware portfolio will be used to help streamline the deployment, provisioning and ongoing management of HealthShare NSW's enterprise applications. Oracle SOA Suite in conjunction with Oracle WebLogic Server will help HealthShare NSW simplify its current and future application integration requirements enabling it to reduce risk around application deployment, speed time to market and respond to business requirements.

The Oracle Engineered Systems platform will be established in the new Whole of Government data centers with applications migration planned for late 2013, and full production status planned in 2014.

Supporting Quotes

"This initiative will provide a significant increase in capacity for NSW Health to support Australia's largest corporate program in Government," commented HealthShare NSW CIO, Greg Wells.

"NSW Health with HealthShare NSW seeks to provide high-quality future state shared services to support the delivery of patient care within the state's health system. This project, which includes the implementation of the most efficient technologies, is in keeping with the department's sustainable business solution approach and helps to ensure ongoing improvement, increasing levels of efficiency and greater savings for NSW Health," said Mike Rillstone, Chief Executive, HealthShare NSW.

"NSW Health's shared services initiative, driven by HealthShare NSW, is a fantastic demonstration of the transformative power of cutting edge enterprise technology. Whether through data centre consolidation initiatives or through the deployment of Oracle Engineered Systems, today's technology enables businesses to operate more efficiently and deliver enhanced levels or service to their customers and stakeholders," said Ian White, Country SVP, Managing Director from Oracle.